


And Now These Three Remain

by frecklebombfic (frecklebomb), idellaphod, jjjat3am, knight_tracer, lirin



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Community: pod_together, Gen, Podfic, Podfic Length: 20-30 Minutes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-06-20 14:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15535848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frecklebomb/pseuds/frecklebombfic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/idellaphod/pseuds/idellaphod, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/jjjat3am, https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: A triptych for Kivrin.





	And Now These Three Remain

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to drayton for betaing.

cover art provided by idella

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## Streaming Audio

## Downloads

  * [MP3](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2018/%5Bottu%5D%20and%20now%20these%20three%20remain.mp3) (right click; save as) | 9.36 MB



## Duration

  * 00.20.09 

## Cast



* frecklebombfic as Colin Templer 
* idella as Kivrin Engle 
* jjjat3am as Anders 
* knight_tracer as radio interviewer   
---|---  
  
EXCERPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK (081562–081789)

He's gone.

I just thought I should mention that. Not that it will make any difference. I know now that this corder will probably never be heard—there's nobody left to bury me when I die, and even if I did end up in a graveyard, it wouldn't be the one Montoya's digging in. But at least it will outlast me. And Roche. And every other soul in this godforsaken village.

Except, it's not completely godforsaken. Father Roche still believed in Him. I don't know how he could bring himself to do so, after all the pain and ugliness we've seen in the last month. But somehow, his faith was strong enough that nothing could shake it, not even the Black Death. Not even his own death, staring him in the face.

And in some way, I was a part of that for him. He believed that God had sent me, as an angel from heaven, to comfort and strengthen him. And if my actions eased his final hours and gave him comfort in his final days, then I am glad of it, though I am not who he thought I was.

Or perhaps God did send me. I didn't hear a still small voice, but who am I to say how God may work? When Saint Catherine debated the pagan philosophers, did God speak to her and tell her what she must do? Or did she just do it because she knew it was the right thing to do?

I don't know anymore. Everybody's gone, and I don't know what I'll do now. God, if You're out there...I have not the faith of Roche or of Catherine. Please, show me what I must do. Please remember Father Roche, Your faithful servant, and bring him unto life everlasting. Amen.

* * *

FINAL EVALUATION FOR HISTORIAN KIVRIN ENGLE, 25 NOVEMBER 2059

Q: Ms. Engle, thank you for meeting with me today. Do you know why you are here?

A: To get permission to time travel again.

Q: Not exactly. You are here to be evaluated as to whether you are well enough to journey temporally beyond our current sphere. I am no capricious arbiter who will grant permission or not as my fancies take me, but an evaluator, who will judge whether within yourself you hold the strength to travel to the past after your traumatic experiences.

A: Yet you state up front that you believe my experiences were traumatic. Isn't that part of what we're here to evaluate: whether my experiences in 1348 and 1349 traumatized me in any lasting way? It's been five years; I personally feel as if I've gotten over it by now.

Q: Well, that's what we're here to find out. Tell me, Ms. Engle, when you think of your time in 1348, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

A: People. Frightened but brave. Irreplaceable. Strong in spirit despite their circumstances.

Q: Do you miss them?

A: Yes. But I'm glad I had the chance to meet them. My life would be the poorer if I had never been there. If I'd left them all alone to live and die, unobserved, unnoted.

Q: But they would have done no worse without you.

A: Would they? They would have had Roche there, I suppose. He would have done all he could. Perhaps he would not have survived as long as he did if he was doing it all himself. So many graves... And I wouldn't have been able to ring the bell for him. I wish I could have buried him, but at least we buried everyone else. I don't know if he could have done it alone.

Q: Do you feel guilty, that everyone you met died while you survived?

A: I don't know. I suppose...they would have died whether I had been there or not, wouldn't they? I tried to save them, but I couldn't. Agnes, perhaps...she might have died earlier, when the cut on her knee was infected, but I couldn't save her at the end. Father Roche, when I told him that I wished I could have saved him, he told me that I had saved him, from fear and unbelief. If I had died there, it would have been all right, but then Mr. Dunworthy came, and that was even better. You know, the whole time I was there, and I thought I didn't know where the drop was and nobody would find me, I kept thinking that Mr. Dunworthy was too wise to let that stop him, and there was this hope in the back of my mind that he would come for me and rescue me somehow. I don't know if there is a God, but if there is, perhaps He wanted me there to help the people in that village, and perhaps He's not done with me and that's why He didn't let me die. I don't know. When I was in 1348, I thought it was only a foolish hope that I would ever leave there at all, but now that I'm here in our time, I don't want to stay. There are so many other things that I could be doing. Other people, dead long before you or I were born, but maybe they need my help. Maybe they've already been helped by me, so many years ago. And so many stories, that I can bring to the present so that they can be remembered, and so that people can know how wonderful they were. They were brave and strong, and even though all their own hopes were cut short, I was able to preserve the tales of how the people I met did not live their lives in vain.

Q: And is that why you want permission to time travel again, so that you can give assistance to contemps?

A: I want to preserve their stories. To tell how brave and irreplaceable they were. And as for my assistance, it will only be the assistance that any other contemp might give. I will not take anything through the net that does not belong there, if that's what you're asking. But if another pair of hands is all the aid that is needed, then—well, in history, it would have been as if I had always been there, would it not? And if it is not right for me to assist, then the net will not open. So there's no chance of my breaking history. But, listen. We aren't alone, here in our temporal sphere. There are 10 billion people alive in the world, right now. More than 100 billion have lived throughout time. I cannot meet all of them—none of us can. But isn't it worse, to meet none at all? To while away our days, speaking to no one and making no connections? To be human is to be part of a community. I want...I hope...to expand my community outside of what I have found here in 2059, and to tell others about communities in the past. It's in my DNA, I suppose.

Q: Hmm. And if you are not cleared for time travel, what are your alternate plans for the future?

A: Continue teaching, I suppose. I haven't thought about it much. I've been concentrating too much on trying to make this work to spend time worrying about alternate possibilities until I must.

Q: Are you sure that's wise, to pin all your hopes on a single thing that may not come to pass?

A: I think it is. When I was in 1348, should I have forgotten all about 2054 and the place I came from, because it was only a single place that I might never return to? Hope isn't some nebulous foolish thing, believed in only by the simple. The best sort of hope is the kind that is founded upon knowledge: when you focus all your expectations and desires on something you trust will come to pass. When I was in 1348, I placed hope in Mr. Dunworthy's coming because I knew him, and I knew he would do everything he could to come for me. And now, I place my hopes for my future in time travel, because I know that's where I belong. Please, Mr. Anders. It's your choice whether to clear me or not, but if I am not cleared today, I will try again and again, because I cannot do otherwise. This is my life's work. You must see that.

Q: A question on another topic. If you time travel again, you will meet others who will die. Perhaps they will even die while you are present, as did Roche, Rosemund, Agnes, Eliwys...shall I go on?

A: As you wish. I was in the waiting room at the hospital when my grandmother died of cancer; you might add her to the list.

Q: This is a list of people whom you would not have seen die if you had not chosen to become a historian.

A: But if it were a list of people who died at the time of life that was their fate, and whose passing may have been comforted by my presence—the list would be much the same, would it not?

Q: Perhaps. Very well, Ms. Engle, although I am not entirely satisfied with the idea of sending someone who went through the sort of experience you went through back to the past again—any more than I would have been satisfied with the fact that you were sent to a 10 in the first place, had I worked here then and had control over such decisions—you seem to have recovered from the experience as well as you might. Your therapist’s and advisor’s reports were most encouraging. I see no reason to withhold clearance. I'll have the paperwork filed and sent over in the morning. You are dismissed.

A: Thank you, Mr. Anders. Thank you very much!

END RECORDING

* * *

PUBLIC IONOSPHERE RADIO BROADCAST, 6 JANUARY 2134

Thank you for listening to Public Ionosphere Radio, broadcasting live from London. Next up, we have Professor Colin Templer of Oxford University. Professor Templer is here to tell us about a pioneer of time travel who passed away just a few days ago: one of the last old guard remaining.

CT: Well, yes, I suppose you could call her that, although Kivrin wouldn't have thought of herself as a pioneer. You know, although it all seems so long ago now that the years all blend together, when Kivrin came to Oxford to study history, time travel was already a relatively accepted science. But nobody had gone as far back in time as she went, because the Middle Ages had been ranked as a 10, so in that way, she was indeed a pioneer. The 10 ranking was restored almost immediately after her trip and stayed that way for a long time afterwards; it was only by chance that she was able to go at all. This was before we had temporal baffles or upsilon inhibitors, of course.

PIR: For those who aren't familiar, can you explain what temporal baffles and upsilon inhibitors are?

CT: Oh, of course. As you might guess, they're parts of our, well, time machine, to use the popular term. Put simply, both pieces function as a cushion for the space–time continuum, and enhance the net's refusal to open in any case that could be dangerous—for either the historian or for history itself. Upsilon inhibitors were incorporated into the net in 2071, after the Davies Closure, and temporal baffles were incorporated late the following year, after the tragic loss of Willem Staer. Although the space–time continuum is very robust, those two events had pushed it beyond the limits we were comfortable with, and we decided it needed further protections. Well, I say we, but I was merely an observer. The effort was headed up by Makoto Ishiwaka of the University of London, and actually I believe Kivrin was the point of contact for Oxford on the project.

PIR: Yes, she is one of the co-authors of Dr. Ishiwaka's paper on variation in the upsilon constant that, after several previous false starts, finally provided the impetus for universal adoption of the upsilon inhibitor. But as big of an influence as that was, it's barely a drop in the bucket among her other achievements.

CT: Yes, in addition to being the first historian to travel to the Middle Ages—and later, the first historian to travel to the Middle Ages more than once; in total, she made five trips, her earliest destination being 1094 and the latest 1492. Experiencing those times for herself is one thing; but Kivrin also loved to share her knowledge with others. She taught at Oxford whenever she was not in the past, almost until the end; it was only last year that she had to retire due to ill health. And she shared her knowledge beyond Oxford, by writing several books. She co-authored a couple on the upsilon inhibition situation and the science behind time travel to higher-risk destinations, and also wrote several, both as sole and co-author, about the parts of the Middle Ages that she had personally experienced. If you're going to pick one of her books up, "A Bird's Eye View of the Black Death: England, Scotland, and the Spread from Continental Europe" would be quite accessible for a general audience, and my personal favorite is "Perceptions of the First Crusade in England", because that was the research project that I actually got to accompany her on. That was a year after the Davies Closure; during the closure, I had been focusing, as we all were, on the times that were closed off from us, and the need to retrieve the people there and figure out why the closure had happened. But as soon as that was behind us, Kivrin—well, Professor Engle, as she was to me then—encouraged me to return to my first interest, of the Crusades, and pushed the First Crusade project through while insisting I had to accompany her. I was very grateful to her for that; if she hadn't provided the impetus, I don't know how long I would have remained focused on Twentieth Century. Not that there's anything wrong with Twentieth, of course; I've just always been more fascinated by Medieval.

PIR: Can you tell us about your expedition to the First Crusade?

CT: Sure. There were four students, and then Kivrin as our supervisor. Three of the students were male; two of us masqueraded as knights, and the third as our servant. The female student—Andria Lindstrom, who is now an emeritus professor at Harvard University—posed as my wife, and Kivrin acted as a second servant. Of course as a servant, she couldn't obviously take charge when we were around any contemps, but she was looking out for us the whole time. She cared deeply about her students; that was what made her as much of a natural at teaching as she was at being a historian, I think. Kivrin made sure that we all had chances to interact with the contemps throughout the project, with no one being relegate to a support role, and she did her best to keep us out of trouble. When one of the students didn't show up at the drop at the appropriate time, she insisted that the rest of us students go back through while she stayed to look for him. It caused quite an argument, because the rest of us didn't think it would be safe for her to go, but then Kivrin never cared overmuch for her own personal safety. Thankfully, Ryan showed up only half an hour late, before any of us were reduced to using force to shove the others into the net. She was quite the taskmaster after we returned, as well, making us write endless reports and analyses of our experience. But in the end, all four of us students got publications out of the experience, thanks to Kivrin.

PIR: Is that the only time you went on a drop with Professor Engle?

CT: There was one other time; the first time I met her, in fact, long before she was a professor. One of the things that's always struck me most about Kivrin was her love for people, and that rang true even in our first interaction. It was in 1349; James Dunworthy and I had gone back to retrieve her after the fix had been lost in the Pandemic of '54. Kivrin was only an undergraduate then, and I—well, I was much too young to be allowed back in time, but things were in a great deal of disarray, what with the Pandemic and with a student's life at stake, and I took advantage of that to the best of my twelve-year-old ability. How exactly I managed it doesn't matter, but I accompanied Mr. Dunworthy on his retrieval mission, and we found Kivrin on the outskirts of a village that had been ravaged by the Black Death. Throughout the weeks that had preceded, she and others there had cared for the sick and buried the dying and marked their passing, as one after another, every person who lived in that village died of the plague. Only a few hours before we finally reached her, the last remaining occupant, a priest named Roche, had died, and Kivrin didn't have the strength to bury him. Nor did we; I was only a boy, and Dunworthy was recovering from serious illness. But she insisted that we must at least ring the bell to mark Roche's passing. That was how all deaths were commemorated in those days, before obituaries in newspapers or today's necroscapes. Kivrin refused to leave until we had rung the bell for him. Even though Roche was already dead, and nothing could be done to save him, still she cared about him so much, as she cared for—and truly loved, I think—so many contemps, that showing him the proper respect was more important to her than her personal safety. That's what struck me about Kivrin Engle when I first met her, and throughout her life it continued to shine through: her love of those around her, both in her own time and in the times she traveled to.

PIR: Thank you, Professor Colin Templer, for sharing your memories of the late Kivrin Engle. And now, as she has done for others, so we would like to do for her now, and close this program by honoring her memory in a way she would no doubt find fitting: by the tolling of a bell.


End file.
